When you were using the software to convert, did you notice that you could go directly to .flac with this program? This is what I did but I am not sure if it worked. Do you have to extract as wav and then use foobar to go to .flac?

 

You can go directly to flac but not all will play. You don't have the option to set the compression in DVD-Audio Extractor, at least not that I have found. If I have to use Extractor, I extract to .WAV and then use Foobar to make the .FLAC files and they work every time.

 

OK....sounds good.
I think that I will spend a couple of hours converting these DVD concerts over.

Thanks again everyone for the help! Love this site.

 

You have to compress the flac files down to 48 or 44 from my experience so far. My biggest complaint with system is lack of Bass and there is no equalizer. I contacted ELS and asked them about this and they said a future update would have better audio controls. I will believe it when I see it.

 

I find my system has plenty of bass for the music I listen to. I tend towards rock, progressive rock, etc.

 

Yes , I concur with above . The subwoofer on the ELS 3D is plenty deep

 

I queued up Pink Floyd's "Welcome To The Machine" from the Blu-ray disc in their Wish You Were Here immersion set.. talk about deep and amazing bass

 

Try the intro to "Snowbound" by Donald Fagan from the Kamakiriad DVD-A if you have it. DEEEEEEEEEEEEP base. Always a good ELS demo for me in the past (as a DVD-A)

 

I didn't know they made a DVD-A from that album. I don't see it for sale anywhere

 

There are 3 Donald Fagen albums that had DVD-A releases, and they are all incredible in the cars. Here's a link to a photo scan of every DVD-A that Warner/Rhino released, plus the demo DVD-A's, including the Acura discs.

https://www.quadraphonicquad.com/QQWBRhinoGallery.htm

 

I get that the true greatness of this audio system really comes out with all these lossless files and whatnot. With that being said, many more people (like me) are primarily going to be listening to their music via bluetooth. Does it still sound better than most other systems when listened to that way? (I download my songs in the highest quality setting Spotify will let me for reference)

 

Hey all,

Just posting some things I have learned over the last couple of days. I have a Mac, so I could download Foobar, but the extras seem to come Windows only. I download DVD Audio Extractor to create a FLAC file. It does that well except it is compressed. I have been talking to a website that sells FLAC files (not 5.1, but...) and they said it was easy to "uncompress" the file. I followed a link on a Wiki page that lead me to xACT (X Audio Compression Toolkit). When I used the FLAC files from DVD Audio Extractor in this program, I selected encode and fastest (which I read is no compression) it changed them to an uncompressed format. It was very quick and these files work in the RDX.

I have been reading so many postings on this and learning so much, I had to add what I had found out. Hope this helps some.

Billy

 

 

Thank you! There is just no substitute for that high quality!

 

I don't use Bluetooth for music being as I'm a big fan of either SiriusXM or my own music collection on multiple flash drives (non 5.1) and both definitely sound better than in my last 2 vehicles, and I haven't even begun to 'tune' my RDX yet.

 

So I guess my next question is what do you have your settings at? I have the bass turned all the way up and the treble down and the bass is still not great. Of course I came from a Bose system, so maybe my expectations are not being met.

 

Let's face it, unless there is a 10"+ subwoofer in the car, you are not going to get major bass. Just not enough speaker to move the air. I don't know what the Bose system had for a subwoofer to get the bass you are comparing.

I feel the bass response is adequate for the music I listen to but it'll never rattle the windows.

 

Bose is not a reference. Bose is great in two areas: noise cancelling headphones, and small footprint speakers which create big sound. However, Bose can be called "Hi-Fi" only by those who have never heard what Hi-Fi sound is. Suprisingly, ELS 3D in RDX A-spec and Advance sounds a lot like Bose. Bose uses small speakers to create strong trebles and mid-frequency sound, and a powerful subwoofer to fill in the bass. The cross-over point of the subwoofer may be pushed up as much as it goes, maybe to 60 or 80 Hz, but there is still a gap around low-mid frequencies. ELS 3D, tuned to create an even sound field across the whole vehicle, had to accept many compromises, including a gap in low-mid area. Even with mid in the equalizer all the way down, and roof speaker all the way down, it still sounds like Bose - and Bose sounds like a $1,000 sound system, whereas to match ELS in sound one has to spend over $10,000. The problem with ELS 3D is that when the bass recorded on the disk falls below 40 Hz or so, the subwoofer does a very good job in the car. But if the recorded bass falls around that very gap in frequencies, i.e., when bass is there but it is not a super low bass, it gets lost. Therefore, you see that in some disks, there is too much bass which hits your ears, while in others it sounds like there is none.

After experimenting with ELS-3D, I asked the dealer to let me listen to the same track (in this case, I used "Wish you were here" in 5.1) in RDX 19 Tech, with 12 speaker ELS. The sound was way better, very much like in the older generation Acura's. There was no gap in the low-mid area. Of course, the rear seat passengers would not enjoy it, all that 3D tuning and 4 extra speakers in ELS 3D (16 vs 12) are there to create their comfort at the expense of the driver, but for driver there is a big difference for the worse. And I bet you, the bass will be a lot more even across disks with the regular ELS.

Those who are after the best sound should not go above Tech package. ELS 3D is not even close to Hi-Fi. I found it hard to listen for longer than half an hour. Too much in the middle frequency range and not enough range of adjustments to tune it. In contrast, ELS without 3D was and still is a sonic heaven for the car.

 

I am not sure what you are or are not hearing, but I've had 5 previous Acura's with ELS systems, 4 with the DVD-A original variation, and one with the DTS-CD only variation, and my wife still has her original 2005 RL with the Bose 5.1 system in it, and I will say that while those original DVD-A systems were quite stunning, I believe the 3D system in my A-Spec RDX sounds just as good as those early systems with 5.1 material. I have had the car for over a month, and lived with figuring out how to get the 5.1 files to play properly, so I've done a LOT of listening, and in my opinion, this system is great.

It will not shake your windows or move your seats, but it has far better detail than my 17 RDX, that's for sure. It's been a while since I had the DVD-A variant (my 14 RDX had it), so I am a bit distanced from that car, but listening to the same material in the RL I don't hear much difference. I will admit the RL is a bit punchier, but that does not mean better to me.

I leave my bass and treble setting neutral, and my balance skewed a bit towards the rears. I also boost the center by a notch. That's it. I have also played some quadraphonic material, which has no center and no subwoofer, and the system reproduced the bass in those tracks just fine - again, not blowing my windows out, but good enough for me.

I guess it's to each his own. As for stereo, I honestly haven't tried that yet. Still working on fine tuning my stick library with tags and 5.1 tunes.

:-jon

 

^This.

 

Jon, thank you for sharing!
Your comment made me wonder if the loaner which I got could have had one of the speakers incorrectly phased

When it comes to sound, everything becomes highly subjective. Opinions are valuable, but we are all different when it comes to how we hear and interpret sounds. I suppose, the conclusion is that one should not assume that one version of the system is better than the other, but listen and compare using the type of music which one usually listens to.

 

 

The loaner was A-spec.

 

To add to what I wrote above... I think perception of sound quality, in addition to being subjective, depends on background of each particular person, i.e., on his or her "reference point", the sound quality which that person usually hears or heard in the past. My current reference point is a 5.1 home system based on Bowers&Wilkins CM series 3-way tower and center speakers and a Velodine subwoofer. This can be considered a high end home theater system, or entry level hi-fi. The speakers alone were around $8,000 for a full set about 10 years ago, plus Oppo player and amplifier. At that time, I wanted a sound system which sounded a step above ELS Surround in the second generation of MDX. I visited all local audio retailers, listened to everything they had, ranging from speakers for $150 each to a $20,000+ stereo with McIntosh tube amplifier. Speakers priced between $5,000 and $10,000 each sounded absolutely amazing but were totally outside of my budget for a 5.1 system. So I ended up with this system described above. I was very surprised that I had to go into that price range to exceed ELS Surround in sound quality in surround (in contrast, it does not take much to beat ELS surround in stereo mode. In stereo, it sounds like any Jeep or any high end Honda). I thought a $2000 sound system would do it to match 5.1 sound, but nothing in that price range was even close in sound balance and quality.

This is the reason why I wrote a couple of times above that ELS Surround sounds, in 5.1 mode, like a $5k to $10k sound system. It was not a random number but conclusion based on audition of many sound systems and speakers. I do not think the speakers themselves are that good or expensive, it is a great job done while tuning the digital signal processor to make the speakers sound within the vehicle as good as they possibly can. This is why it is ELS

Anyhow, the sound of that home system is my reference point. Comparing the sound of RDX 2019 to the home system, and listening again to DVD-A in my old car, I can only reiterate my observations. The older generation ELS Surround has a great surround sound field centered around the driver and overall well balanced frequency range. The only downside is that its mid-highs and highs are a little muddy and not as crisp and transparent as they could be. This is the main area where it falls behind my home system. Increasing the level of highs in the car audio does not help as they sound slightly distorted and exaggerated, without getting cleaner. The new ELS 3D does better on clarity and transparency of highs, but, compared to my reference, has exaggerated middles to the point that I cannot tolerate them for longer than half an hour, at least with the tracks which I used for assessment of sound quality, and seems to have a gap in mid-lows to lows, all the way down to the crossover frequency where subwoofer kicks in. Sound in RDX Tech was similar or slightly better than in older generation Acuras and did not have the low frequency gap, as much as I could judge from a 5 minute listen at the dealer - which may not be enough, but this is all that I got.

Also, I was not totally happy with the surround sound field of ELS 3D. Somehow, the rears were not nearly as pronounced. Perhaps I could do more tweaking to fix it, I just could not immediately find where to do it as I did not see a slider for that in the audio settings menu.

I am not in the market for a new RDX, so this opinion above does not really matter, even for me at this point, but when new MDX comes out, I will know what to pay attention to.

I played only one stereo sound track in FLAC in the new RDX, not enough to make a judgement, but even after a short listen the first impression was that it sounded quite a bit better than stereo tracks in older ELS systems. Perhaps they tuned the system for stereo better than before, assuming that most people would listen to stereo.

Opinion of oblio98 made me wonder if something was wrong with the sound system of the loaner which I got (it could have been one of early production vehicles). The only way to confirm is to wait until I perhaps get another loaner of the same model to see how that one sounds.

Don't get me wrong, each version of ELS is a great sounding system, the differences which I am pointing out are quite subtle and may or may not be noticeable for other people depending on what they got used to.

 

 

It's too bad that Acura does not provide a sampler for the ELS system like they used to.....(see posts above).
It is very cool hearing well - produced surround sound in a car.
Sound quality is most certainly subjective at some point but it would be interesting if Acura once again provided a sample of music to show the capabilities of the ELS and ELS 3D.

 

That would just frustrate owners. I’d bet that 99% of RDX buyers are like me and don’t own a single dvd-a or Blu-ray music disk, or if they do, have no idea about this forum and how to convert those disks to FLAC files. I did a quick search on Amazon, and only see a handful of 5.1 titles available, most are 15-20 year old, and list only a few left. I’ve seen quite a few comments of how good Donald Fagen’s music sounds. I saw Steely Dan’s Two Against Nature listed for $97, and only 1 left. If you don’t already have a collection, it’s just too difficult and time consuming to get a decent collection today.

 

yeah I understand that. I am also frustrated by the limited availability both now and even in 2007 when I got my TL with ELS.
I just think that it is a shame that Acura has this system that is very good in stereo, but even more interesting in surround.
Honestly I spend most of my time listening to Audible books since I have a long daily commute. I finally dropped XM since they added DJs (don't want to pay for talk). When I want music I can listen to old Grateful Dead bootlegs on tape (cassette player still works) or .flac versions downloadable from Internet Archive.
I am in the process of converting some DVD 5.1 to flac, as well as a bunch of CDs thanks to the help of people on this forum.
Even if Acura offered the old DVD Audio files from the previous releases that would be cool. More first world problems I guess.

 

Too bad we still that RIAA to deal with on these things so sharing is "illegal". The format is pretty much abandoned.

Several of us still have quite a library of surround discs and .FLAC files

I am pretty sure the vast majority of owners have no idea that the system can sound this good of know of it's capabilities... and many probably don't care about audio quality anyway

 

 

Jon,

Speaking of tagging, I have noticed with a large SSD USB loaded with a hundred albums or so, it can take a long time for the USB system to build the index. I wondered if I tagged the files with no folders, and just put all files in root directory such as "%artist% - %album% - %track% - %title%" if that would speed up the process? Have you tried that or know of any index performance enhancements short of having multiple USBs?

 

Andy,

I was thinking more about your review. Are you sure your 5.1 files were 24/48? If they were 24/96, and I know this sounds crazy, but if they were 24/96 they will sound like crap. The decoding in the ELS unit loses the channel assignments when it downsamples the 24/96 to 24/48. I don't know if you've seen some of my other posts about this, so maybe that's the case.

For some reason, if you play a 5.1 file that's 24/96, it ,merges the rear channels into the fronts, which really muddies the sound up. It really baffled me when I was first testing the car, because it sounded OK, and I could not quite understand by ear what was happening, but the USB stick I took to the dealer had random 5.1 .wav files on it and some sounded great, while others sounded not great. It was only after I made channel identification test files to play in the car that the issue revealed itself.

Anyway, that's just a thought.

Also, the balance can be adjusted, just like in the old ELS Acura's, this system is a bit more refined at that. AND.... the roof speakers can have their volume adjusted. So if that's an issue, you could always just turn them down. To be honest, I haven't really messed around with that yet!







:-jon

 

So far I haven't gotten to a USB that big. I have started with 16's and 32's, and now have a 160Gb with about 15 5.1 albums on it. The system reads the indexes pretty fast, I have to say. I am spending time converting a lot of 5.1 24/96 .wav's to 24/48 .flacs and tagging everything, and that takes time.

A few oddities I've found so far:

1) The "screeching tone" does rear it's ugly head from time to time. You're listening to a great tune, and all of a sudden it's like a weather alert on your phone, screeching - and then the player says that it can't read the file. It them moves on fine to the next track. If you skip back to the track that screeched, it plays fine the second time, so it's not the data.

2) I created 24/48 .flac files of quadraphonic material. When I put the files together, I made them 6 channel files, creating empty Center and LFE channels. I figured the system would like that better. Anyway, they played fine and sound pretty good. However, one was playing when I turned off the car, when I got back in and powered up, the rear channels were silent. Since it was interesting to hear just the fronts I let it play, and when it got to the next song, the rears kicked back in. Odd!

So, needless to say, there still are some things that have to be worked out on the ELS 3D Audio System.

 

The Steven Wilson remixes really utilize the center channel for vocals. I was listening to the 5.1 Dark Side of the Moon the other day and wow, they really move the sound around the cabin. To me, the soundstage is really full using the roof, sides and rear speakers.

Also, I have about 45 or so albums on my 256GB thumb drive and it indexes fairly fast,.. less than 30 seconds, I'd say

 

Stew, I agree on the SW remixes, Jethro Tull sounds delicious. Of course, I like Porcupine Tree and his solo albums too!

I was 3/4 full on a new 500GB SSD drive with over 100 albums and it started to take quite a bit of time to startup, even after initial indexing. So I used a 256 SSD, removed the WAV files, and put my stereo 16-44 CD & 24-48 FLACs on there from the 500GB drive. I am trying to get back to ~ 50 albums per drive, as that was my experience as well with the startup delay being bearable.

 

This is a very good point indeed. I started with research of known and shared on discussion forums information, then, when I had an opportunity to test FLAC tracks in a car, I started with encoding a music track with several different bitrates and compression levels to validate what I read. Indeed, as you pointed out, I found that 24/96 does not play in true surround and indeed sounds like crap. My second step in validation was to download test file with channel identification, kindly prepared and shared by JonUrban on Quadraphonic quad form (I wonder if that could be your other nickname, based on location, name, and similar style of writing). These are very short files in which the author names each channel, and the track is mixed in such a way that his voice sounds from the channel which he names. Below is a direct link to the files which I think were very, very helpful.

https://www.quadraphonicquad.com/miscstuff/testfiles.zip

I transcoded these files into FLAC and experimented with them. Then, after establishing firmly what plays and what does not, I encoded several music tracks in 24/48 with zero compression, and payed special attention that I do it correctly.

In my 2nd gen MDX, there are separate Balance and Fader sliders. Fader moves the sound field from rear to front. It changes the level of two surround (rear) speakers relatively to the volume of the front speakers. A well mixed track never would require adjustment to this setting. Anyhow, this is what I was referring to.

I experimented with all of the settings on your pictures (thank you for posting them). I ended up with somewhat similar to your choices, kept high and bass a little above factory default, and mids more or less all the way down. I also tried to reduce ceiling speaker, with not too much impact, as far as I can remember. And of course it was "full vehicle".


I experienced that, too, a couple of times. My first guess would be that one needs a faster (USB 3.0) flash drive. I used an old 8GB one (from fear to forget it in the car when returning the loaner), which was USB 2.0 at best, if not USB 1.0. This does not seem to make a lot of sense, but it is the only parameter in our control. If this does not help, it must be a software glitch or underpowered / underperforming processor in the navi/sound system running at its performance limit. Which, BTW, could also explain why it does not like 24/96...

Did you try encoding them just as 4.0? Since processing is done on software level, one would think that the system could benefit from 4 channels instead of 6, as the amount of calculations is 50% less. Encoding them as they were recorded would be my first preference, assuming the car can play these files. On DVD-Audio or DTS CDs, 4.0 or 5.0 have never been a problem.

On a separate note, do you still have a vehicle with a previous generation ELS system and DVD-Audio playback? The reason I am asking is because you could perhaps listen to the same track that I listened, both on DVD-A and in FLAC format, assuming that you are curious enough to invest any time in it, which may or may not be worth it.

 

Andy,

Yep, I'm Jon. "oblio98" was/is my eBay handle and I use it on forums from time to time. I've been on this forum since 2001 as oblio98, so I kept it that way.
I am going to revise my review at QQ and add some more stuff to it. I am still trying to get a good grip on playlists. I can get them to work, but they never seem to sort the way I create them.

I don't have an older ELS system, but my wife's car is a 2005 RL with the Bose 5.1 DVD-Audio system. I would surely try to use the tracks you tried, as I have quite a lot of 5.1 and 4.0 material as you might expect. It should not be a problem accessing the same stuff you tried.

I will try .flac'ing a quad file as a quad file to see how the system handles it. Maybe it does not like the empty C and LFE channels.

I do believe your assessment of the audio and what you heard, I was just saying that I hear it differently. But don't we all?

:-jon

 

Thank you, Jon. 2005 RL with Bose would again sound differently that ELS in our 2008 MDX and 2013 RDX, so it is not a worthy test. I mean, it is always interesting to compare, but one can not derive a conclusion how the same DVD-A would play in ELS systems...

RL is kind of unique - Acura likes to experiment with alternative sound systems with RLs. Some years back, I listened at a dealer to Krell system in RL. It could not play DVD-A but reportedly could play DTS-CDs. In stereo, it was very nice... I did not even know that it had a Bose 5.1 system before that. My first MDX also had Bose, but stereo.

P.S. I cannot miss the opportunity to thank you for sharing those test files They were great to use!

 

Thanks Andy, my pleasure.

In fact, I just modified one of those test files to be a 4.0 channel identification .flac file and tried it in the car. IT DOES NOT WORK!

The rear channel information goes to the front speakers, so for future reference, if you want 4 channel in the ELS 3D System, you need an empty center and LFE channel in your flac or wav file.

 

I am not sure how long it lasted, but it sounds pretty good. I always wondered why this model did not get the ELS system